But Gabriel was traveling, seeking out European vampires to learn how to control his hunger and use his powers. His studies continued until his brothers died in a duel (with each other) a few years later. Having never fully recovered from Gabriel’s turning and her husband’s ensuing heart attack, his mother, Margaret, died of what my father called “shock and heartache.” According to the vampire archives, the undigested Gabriel returned to the Hollow with little fanfare, showing up at his family attorney’s office in the dead of night to claim his birthright: the house, the land, and the income. As soon as the papers were signed and sealed, he dropped off the radar again and faded from local memory.

For more than a century, Gabriel bounced between various vampire hot spots and the Hollow. He lived under an assumed name, pretended to die periodically, and then willed the house to himself under the name of a recently deceased young man. I would accuse him of stealing the trick from the Highlander movie, but he didn’t seem to take my pop-culture references very well. And he did predate the Highlander movie by about a hundred years.

Maintaining his faux inheritance technique, he rented his land to sharecroppers and developed a hand at real estate. As more local people began giving up their farms, he bought them. Before he knew it, Gabriel owned a good portion of what used to be the township. He sold it at an obscenely high profit during the Hollow’s strip-mall boom and now lived like a sort of vampire gentleman of leisure, without the smoking jacket.

Gabriel returned to the Hollow in late 1999, though it’s unclear whether it was because of the Coming Out or that he just missed his ancestral homeland—his strange, somewhat backward ancestral homeland—where he eventually vamped out yours truly. I’m sure there was more stuff in the middle there, but Gabriel was good at hiding it, which was just driving me nuts.

Aunt Jettie, who practiced moving dining-room chairs while I was elbow-deep in cyberspace, informed me that for as long as anyone in the Hollow could remember, the only people allowed on Nightengale property were the tenant farmers. And even they never met their landlord, who was reported to travel frequently. Less and less was said about the Nightengales and their farm over the years, until no one could remember ever actually meeting a member of the family or seeing the house. It was as if a significant historical property had just faded out of the local consciousness, a difficult feat in a town full of rabid Civil War buffs.

While I was in research mode, I looked up the companion Web site for the Guide for the Newly Undead. The features were impressive, with links for buying artificial blood online, a virtual global map to help track the sun at all times, and a handy translator to help newbies understand the Language of the Dead. It’s a language beyond the realm of human comprehension. It predates living speech, even humanity. It was whispered in the darkness before God said, “Let there be light,” and one of the few true ties between vampires and demons. And sadly, it sounds a good deal like Pig Latin.

For instance, Ihbiensay thethsay carthax vortho inxnay tuathua means “I believe I left my rapid infuser at the last pot luck.” I’m still learning. Vampires use the language to communicate under the human radar…and to say rude things about living people without their realizing it. There are some things that you just don’t outgrow, no matter how evolved you are as a life form.

The best part of the site was the quiz to help determine your special vampiric gifts, although it didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. My abilities included being able to see my elderly phantom roommate and, of course, superhuman speed, strength, and agility. It was a nice turn of events for someone who used to get traded from kickball teams. I had influence over certain people, though I hadn’t figured out the formula for which people. Dang it. And according to my “human-vampire relations” score, I might eventually develop some-mind reading skills. There was something to look forward to.

I couldn’t shape-shift, like some of the ancient vamps. I couldn’t fly. And I envied the vamps with off-the-wall powers, such as finding lost objects or being able to tell when people are lying. Then again, some poor suckers were stuck with being able to feel the pain of every living thing around them or communicating with squirrels, so I felt relatively fortunate.

The site also included a listing of vampire-friendly businesses in and around my zip code, the types of places that didn’t exactly advertise in the Yellow Pages. You had to know they were there in the first place to find them, apparently. There were the expected clubs and bars but also an occult-focused hobby store called the Stitchin’ Witch and a salon that catered to our special grooming needs. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to file down vampire nails.

I was eager to make my debut in vampire society, because surely, shopping stealthily at Wal-Mart didn’t count. Knowing only one other vampire couldn’t be healthy, especially when he could turn out to be the vampiric version of my mother. Gah, I had to stop thinking that.

I needed someone who knew their way around, someone who was not Gabriel. I would have taken Zeb, purely for entertainment value, but he had an actual date, with a real girl. That hadn’t happened in a while, so I was a good friend and put my own needs second to the possibility of him having actual sex with a real girl.

“Aunt Jettie, feel like dusting off your dancing shoes and hanging out with some people who can see you?” I asked, looking up in time to watch my dead aunt try to levitate the china hutch.

That did not bode well.

“Are you sure I’m dressed OK?” I asked, fidgeting with the plain navy T-shirt and jeans I’d been wearing when Andrea, who was even more pale and elegant than I remembered, arrived at my door an hour early. She’d insisted I was fine, though she was wearing a cashmere sweater and beautifully cut gray slacks. I was starting to wonder if this was some sort of attempt to humiliate me for hurting her feelings. She’d probably take me to the club and all of the other vamps would be in black tie. And then she’d dump a bucket of pig’s blood on me.

“You look great,” she said, stopping just outside the door of the Cellar, a respectable looking cement-block building in an unassuming corner of Euclid Avenue. “You know that nobody’s going to be wearing black leather and dog collars, right?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never done this before. I didn’t go to human bars. Mudslides aside, I’m not much of a drinker. Club people are not my people. Now, book-club people—”

“These are your people, Jane, more than I am,” she said, her voice thinning as she pulled me toward the door.

“Is there a secret handshake?” I whispered.

She shook her head. “I stay two paces behind you, because I am but a lowly human. You walk into the room as if you know that you belong, that you’re one of them. Make eye contact with as many as possible. Keep your body language aggressive and rigid. You’re an aloof, indomitable warrior queen who could fend off attacks from anyone in the room.”

She reached for the stainless-steel door, repeating, “Aloof, indomitable warrior queen.”

I tensed every muscle in my arms as if I were going to punch the first person I saw, undead or otherwise. Of course, that person was a cuddly, sixty-five-year-old bartender, ironically named Norm, who was clearing pilsners off shiny bar tables.

It was a sports bar, a smoky, noisy, all-American sports bar with dart boards and neon beer signs on the walls. Nobody looked remotely interested in kicking my ass. In fact, nobody even noticed when I came in. They were too busy watching the Cardinals game on an obscenely large plasma screen.

I whirled on Andrea. “You suck.”

“No, technically, you do,” she said, giggling. “I’m sorry, it was just so easy. You should have seen the look on your face.”

“Just for that, I’m not biting you later.”

She sighed heavily. “Spoilsport.”

We sat, and Andrea ordered a dry martini and a “special” for me. I didn’t know what that was, but Norm seemed to know her and didn’t seem like someone who was going to slip garlic (or Rohypnol) into my cocktail. I scanned the room, making a game of separating the vamps from the nonvamps.

Norm was definitely human. He was familiar in an “I think I’ve seen you at church before” way. And he seemed happy and comfortable slinging doctored beers to vampires. Somehow that made me relax. There were two human men mixed in with the crowd watching the baseball game. The vampires were your typical enthusiastic sports fans, cheering, hooting, and sloshing their drinks. The occasional splash of synthetic blood on their shirts was the only sign that something was amiss—besides the vampire Cubs fan sulking in the corner.

A dishwater-blond male vamp wearing faded jeans and a “Virginia Is for Lovers” T-shirt sipped dark lager at the bar, ignoring the hullabaloo behind him. The rest of the tables seated groups of vampire women, immersed in pastel drinks and naughty conversations. Maybe these were vampire housewives?

Seriously, the scariest thing about this place was the sign advertising “Karaoke Tuesdays.” The idea of a drunk vampire belting “I Will Survive” off-key was somehow both compelling and terrifying.

I was calm, comfortable, and ready for a good time when Norm returned with a martini, which he declared “dry as dust” with a fond pat on Andrea’s head. I got something frothy and the color of ripe cantaloupe.

“Um, what is this?” I asked Andrea, waiting for Norm to pass out of hearing distance.

“It’s a smoothie.” Andrea watched as I took a tentative sip. It was good, fruity with just enough coppery aftertaste. Andrea continued, “A special smoothie. Fruit juice, vitamins, minerals, protein powder, and a little bit of…um, pig’s blood.”

“Pig’s blood!” I yelped, spitting the smoothie back into the glass. Andrea shushed me. “You let me drink pig’s blood?”

Well, at least she didn’t dump it on me.

“Shh,” Andrea hissed. “Look, Norm uses pig’s blood because the artificial blood doesn’t mix well with the fruit juice. The enzymes make it go brown. And Norm has some ethical issues with serving human blood. Just try it. You’ll like it. It’s like a zinfandel, light and sweet. At least, that’s what I’m told.”

“I’m not loving you right now,” I growled at her, swallowing a mouthful. It wasn’t bad, but I just couldn’t get the visions of a pleading Porky Pig out of my head. This attitude was pretty hypocritical given my before-death enthusiasm for bacon.

“See?” Andrea asked brightly as I took another sip. “Good girl.”

“Kiss my ass,” I grumbled.

Andrea ignored my grumpiness and gestured to the smoky barroom. “So, what do you think?”

“It’s OK,” I admitted. “Even with everything I’ve learned about vampires, I still expected moody lighting and Goth kids reciting bad poetry. Consider me pleasantly surprised.”

A lovely rose blush tinted Andrea’s cheeks. If she weren’t such a nice person, it would really piss me off that she looked like a redheaded Grace Kelly. Andrea was as out of place here as, well, me in a gym. Andrea was probably not the type of person I would have spent time with when I was living. She was too put together, for one thing. She made my sister seem rumpled. But she was the safest person I knew who could navigate her way through the vampire underground. And I really wanted to make up for making her feel like a hooker.

I’d already decided that if I was going to develop a healthy friendship with Andrea—whose last name was Byrne, by the way—I needed to know more than her deliciously rare blood type. I was not going to be able to feed from her again. It was far too intimate an experience, like making out with someone at the office Christmas party and spending New Year’s week pretending that person hasn’t felt you up. Not that I know what that’s like.